Gas-tax Shortfall Threatens Road Jobs

February 6, 1985|By Mark Prendergast, Staff Writer

TALLAHASSEE — In a year of promised ``no new taxes,`` state leaders now face the nettlesome choice of either raising taxes after all or weathering the public outcry certain to accompany a heavily scaled-back road, bridge and mass transit program.

That was the implicit message Transportation Secretary Paul Pappas delivered to chagrined lawmakers Tuesday during a House Transportation Committee hearing on a projected $600 million shortfall in transportation revenue through 1990.

``(The shortfall) will have a sizable impact on our program,`` Pappas said.

That impact will be seen in scaled-down five-year plans for the state`s transportation district.

The revised plan for District Four, which includes Broward and Palm Peach counties, will be ready for a public hearing Feb. 21 and presented for legislative consideration about March 1, officials said. It is expected to chop $107 million in funding for projects in the district`s seven counties.

Among South Florida projects likely to suffer are the widening and general improvement of State Road 80 in Palm Beach County and Flamingo Road in Broward, said Chuck Barrett of the Department of Transportation`s Fort Lauderdale office.

In Dade County, which is not in District Four, $99 million in subsidies might have to be trimmed from Dade County`s Metrorail system over the next five years, Pappas said.

However, no interstate-highway projects anywhere in Florida are in jeopardy, he stressed, since 90 percent of their funds come from the federal government.

Under sometimes abrasive questioning from lawmakers, Pappas explained that state economists in early 1983 had expected fuel prices and consumption to rise each year. They were unable to foresee the oil glut, OPEC`s recent disharmony and the effect on consumption that more fuel-efficient cars would have, he said.

Thus, rather than producing an ever-increasing windfall, the state`s 5 percent sales tax on fuel -- enacted by legislators in March 1983 on the basis of those figures -- now stands to produce $340 million less in overall fuel taxes through 1990, Pappas said.

Moreover, the situation is further aggravated by uncertainty over final resolution of a court case involving $260 million in disputed airline fuel taxes. If the state loses that case, the grand total for the combined shortfall would exceed $600 million.

Lawmakers indicated they were particulary rankled because they had voted for the gas tax -- and justified it to their constituents -- in order to guarantee financing for projects contained in the various districts` five-year plans.

Pappas insisted that the economists were not to blame and that no one could have foreseen such a complex turn of events.

``In `83, the best economists in government forecast what they thought the price and consumption were going to be,`` he said. ``Everybody was drawing on the best information available at the time.``

As a hedge against a sudden decline in prices, drafters of the gas tax bill set an artificial ``floor`` price of gasoline at $1.148 per gallon and imposed the tax accordingly.

Now lawmakers must decide whether to let that ``floor`` expire June 1, re- enact it or hike it.